BIBLICAL RESEARCHBIBLICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

The Evidences for a Recent Dating for Adam, about 14,000 to 15,000 years Before Present

A recent genetic study of human genes related to the brain concluded that possibly
there appeared a "microcephalin variant (that)
could have arisen anywhere from 14,000 to 60,000 years ago" and an "ASPM variant
ranged from 500 to 14,000 years"
ago and "roughly correlating with the development of written language,
spread of agriculture and development of cities" (see more)

Now if one assumes that the "microcephalin variant
could have arisen anywhere from 14,000 to 60,000 years ago", possibly
could correspond to the "Big Bang" or "Fortuitous Mutation" that Richard G. Klein
refers to in his book "The Dawn of Human Culture" and says occurred about 50,000
years ago. Then, what about the "ASPM variant ranged from 500 to 14,000 years"
ago and "roughly correlating with the development of written language,
spread of agriculture and development of cities" as proposed.

The Bible repeatedly says that Adam and his immediate offspring were
farmers

Genesis 2:15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and too keep it."

Genesis 3:23 Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden to
till the ground from whence he was taken."

Genesis 4:2 And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground."

Here is a review of some of the findings by archaeologists concerning farming:

"The great majority of the cultivated plants of the world trace their origin
to Asia. Out of 640 important cultivated plants, about 500 originated in
Southern Asia. In Asia alone we have established five of the principle regions
of cultivated plants.... The fifth region of origin in Asia is the
Southwestern Asiatic centre and includes Asia Minor, Trans-Caucasia, Iran and
Western Turkmenistan. This region is remarkable, first of all, for its
richness in numbers of species of wheat resistant to different
diseases...There is no doubt that Armenia is the chief home of cultivated
wheat. Asia Minor and Trans-Caucasia gave origin to rye which is represented
here by a great number of varieties and species....

Our studies show definitely that Asia is not only the home of the majority
of modern cultivated plants, but also of our chief domesticated animals such
as the cow, the yak, the buffalo, sheep, goat, horse, and pig...The
chief home of the cow and other cattle, the Oriental type of horse, the goat
and the sheep is specifically Iran....

As the result of a brilliant work of Dr. Sinskaya, the discovery was
recently made that the home of alfalfa, the world's most important forage
crop, is located in Trans-Caucasia and Iran....

From all these definitely established facts the importance of Asia as the
primary home of the greatest majority of cultivated plants and domesticated
animals is quite clear."

More recent studies conducted by Melinda A Zeder and Brian Hesse (Science
287 (2000) 2254-57) place the initial domestication of goats to the Zargos
Mountains at about 10,000 years ago. In more recent studies they have adjusted
the dates slightly and now place domestication of sheep and goats at 11,000 years ago,
pigs at 10,500, and cattle at 10,000. "The earlier dates mean that animals were
domesticated at much the same time as crop plants, and bear on the issue of how
this ensemble of new agricultural species  the farming package known as the
Neolithic revolution  spread from the Near East to Europe."
And Manfred Heun's (Science 278 (1997) 1312-14)
studies indicate that large scale wheat cultivation began from 8,000 to 9,000 years
ago near the Karacadag Mountains. Both areas are very near where the Tigris and
Euphrates Rivers come close together.

"The cradle of agriculture generally has been placed in the Jordan Valley of the
southern Levant (today's Israel and Jordan). But work by Simcha Lev-Yadun of
Israel's Agricultural Research Organization and colleagues suggest the first
farms may have been farther north, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in
what is today northeastern Turkey and northern Syria.

Wild progenitors of the main Neolithic founder crops (einkorn wheat, emmer wheat,
barley, lentil, pea, chickpea, bitter vetch, and flax) are found together only
in this small core area of the Fertile Crescent.

Lev-Yadun reports that wild chickpea especially is extremely rare, yet it was a
staple crop of Neolithic life 10,000 years ago. Agriculture, therefore, probably
began in an area where chickpea is native. Archaeological evidence shows that the
earliest known farming settlements of the Fertile Crescent were in this core area.
Also, the limited genetic variability of these crops implies that they were
domesticated only once  rather than by several different cultures at roughly
the same time. Evidence of domesticated crops in the core area dates to about
10,000 years ago, while the earliest signs of farming elsewhere are about 9,300
years ago.

Neolithic sites discovered in the core area indicate that a society with plenty
of food thrived there. In sites such as Cayonu, Novali Cori, and Gobekli Tepe,
impressive architecture, images, and artifacts have been found. Settlement sites
are also larger in this area than many others of the same time in other parts
of the Fertile Crescent. ..." (From "The Cradle of Agriculture? New Evidence
Moves the World's First Farmers into Turkey" by Reagan Duplisea,
http://www.discoveringarchaeology.com/ articles/ 060100-turkeyfarm.shtml)

Genesis 11:2 And it came to pass,
as they journeyed from the east,
that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there.

"It is known that agriculture spread from the Middle East to Europe during the
Neolithic period about 12,000 years ago, but for many years archeologists have
debated how this occurred. Was it due to the movement of people or to the movement
of ideas? Previous genetic analysis of people living today suggests a
migration - that the people moved - but critics have questioned this view.
The latest study reinforces evidence of a migration in which people brought
their ideas and lifestyle with them."(from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases /2002/09/ 020911072622.htm)

Genesis 11:9... "the name of it called Babel; because the Lord did there
confound the language of all the earth;
and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of the earth.

"A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to
spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that
farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not
later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists reckon. ... Around this time,
farming techniques began to spread out of
Anatolia - now Turkey - across Europe and Asia, archaeological evidence shows."
(From "Language tree rooted in Turkey" by John Whitfield, http://www.nature.com/
nsu/nsu_pf/ 031124/ 031124-6.html) (see more)

Are there any other evidences ?

Genesis 5:29 And he called his name Noah, saying,
This same shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands,
because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed.
Genesis 8:21 ... I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake: ...
... neither will I again smite any more every thing living, ...

(note: the gray band shifts show "a time difference of 570 (GRIP) or 730 (GISP2) years between the Late Pleistocene chronozones" for the varve data." and "At around 10,500 yr B. P. (this date also has a time shift error) a conspicious layer, consisting of 7-10 dark brown, thick varves ..., was deposited in Lake Van. Biomarker analyses of this organic carbon rich layer ... showed, that the lipid fraction consist mainly of longchain alkenones ... The author concludes that Prymnesiophyceae were the primary producers and suggests that a mixing event, following a long time of stagnation, led to the enrichment of nutrients in the lake water." (from Palaeo 122(1996)p.115))

We see a brief warm period from about 15,000 to 14,000 years ago, followed
by a cooling period and then the even greater cooling of the Younger-Dryas period
from about 13,500 to 12,000 years ago. Now what would greatly increase the toil
of a group of farmers more than a period of severe climate? So it would seem
that one could conjecture that the period of the garden of Eden was the relatively warm
period of about 15,000 to 14,000 years ago when Adam started farming and then
this was followed
by the cool period of from 14,000 years ago to about 12,000, "the
curse of the ground" a period in which farming was more difficult. Then about
12,000 years ago the warming up begins and farming becomes easier and proliferates.

How about the location?

As already shown the data on the farmers indicates that the after the flood
Genesis history took place in the Ararat area and that the area is also the origin of
many of the known farm crops and domesticated animals. Also all four of the rivers
of Eden listed in Genesis 2:11-14 can be readily identified, the
"Perath, Hiddekel, Gihon and Pishon"

"Perath is simply the Hebrew version of
Arabic Firat and Greek Euphrates;

"Hiddekel is Hebrew for
Sumerian Idiglat from which the Greek Tigris derives."

Gihon; "... the River Aras, flowing into the Caspian Sea from the
mountains north of Lake Urmia, was once called the Gaihun. By checking the
writings of the Islamic geographers who accompanied the Arabic invasion of
Persia in the 8th century, I was able to confirm that this was indeed the
case. Moreover, even as late as the last century, Victorian atlases and
encyclopaedias were still naming the river as the Gaihun-Aras. The Gaihun
is therefore the missing biblical Gihon."

"Pishon - "Hebrew (West Semitic) name derived from the old
Iranian Uizhun, where the Iranian vowel 'U' had been converted into the
Semitic labial consonant 'P'. Thus we have Uizhun to Pizhun to Pishon.
Strange as it may seem, such switches do occur between the two language
groups. For instance, one archaeological site in Iran is known by its
Arabic (West Semitic) name of Pisdeli whereas its ancient (Iranian) name
was Uishteri. The river Uizhun (the modern Qezel Uzun) - thus identified
as the biblical Pishon - flows down from the mountains of Kurdistan and
empties into the southern basin of the Caspian Sea."

All people are related, but "In the article in the November 2001 issue of The American Journal of Human Genetics,
Ariella Oppenheim of the Hebrew University of Israel wrote that this new study
revealed that Jews have a closer genetic relationship to populations in the
northern Mediterranean (Kurds, Anatolian Turks, and Armenians) than to populations
in the southern Mediterranean (Arabs and Bedouins)." (from http://www.barzan.com/ kevin_brook.htm)

Conclusion:

We have summarized some of the data that seems to indicate that there was a
cultural shift for humans that was brought on by the development of the
farming society possibly allowed by the ASPM gene variant as early as
14,000 years ago. By examining the available archaeological data on the development
of this farming community and comparing it to the Biblical Genesis description of
Adam and his descendants we have attempted to demonstrate how this data provides
us with an approximate time line for the Biblical Adam, the first man by Biblical definition,
a farmer. Thus by farming man demonstrates his ability to;

... let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. Genesis 1:26

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon
the face of the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree
yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. Genesis 1:29

Genes Show Signs Brain Still Evolving

By LAURAN NEERGAARD, AP Medical WriterFri Sep 9, 1:21 AM ET

The human brain may still be evolving. So suggests new research that
tracked changes in two genes thought to help regulate brain growth,
changes that appeared well after the rise of modern humans 200,000
years ago.

That the defining feature of humans — our large brains — continued
to evolve as recently as 5,800 years ago, and may be doing so today,
promises to surprise the average person, if not biologists.

"We, including scientists, have considered ourselves as sort of the
pinnacle of evolution," noted lead researcher Bruce Lahn, a University
of Chicago geneticist whose studies appear in Friday's edition of the
journal Science.

"There's a sense we as humans have kind of peaked," agreed Greg
Wray, director of Duke University's Center for Evolutionary Genomics.
"A different way to look at is it's almost impossible for evolution not
to happen."

Still, the findings also are controversial, because it's far from
clear what effect the genetic changes had or if they arose when Lahn's
"molecular clock" suggests — at roughly the same time period as some
cultural achievements, including written language and the development
of cities.

Lahn and colleagues examined two genes, named microcephalin and
ASPM, that are connected to brain size. If those genes don't work,
babies are born with severely small brains, called microcephaly.

Using DNA samples from ethnically diverse populations, they
identified a collection of variations in each gene that occurred with
unusually high frequency. In fact, the variations were so common they
couldn't be accidental mutations but instead were probably due to
natural selection, where genetic changes that are favorable to a
species quickly gain a foothold and begin to spread, the researchers
report.

Lahn offers an analogy: Medieval monks would copy manuscripts and
each copy would inevitably contain errors — accidental mutations. Years
later, a ruler declares one of those copies the definitive manuscript,
and a rush is on to make many copies of that version — so whatever
changes from the original are in this presumed important copy become
widely disseminated.

Scientists attempt to date genetic changes by tracing back to such
spread, using a statistical model that assumes genes have a certain
mutation rate over time.

For the microcephalin gene, the variation arose about 37,000 years
ago, about the time period when art, music and tool-making were
emerging, Lahn said. For ASPM, the variation arose about 5,800 years
ago, roughly correlating with the development of written language,
spread of agriculture and development of cities, he said.

"The genetic evolution of humans in the very recent past might in some ways be linked to the cultural evolution," he said.

Other scientists urge great caution in interpreting the research.

That the genetic changes have anything to do with brain size or
intelligence "is totally unproven and potentially dangerous territory
to get into with such sketchy data," stressed Dr. Francis Collins,
director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Aside from not knowing what the gene variants actually do, no one
knows how precise the model Lahn used to date them is, Collins added.

Lahn's own calculations acknowledge that the microcephalin variant
could have arisen anywhere from 14,000 to 60,000 years ago, and that
the uncertainty about the ASPM variant ranged from 500 to 14,000 years
ago.

Those criticisms are particularly important, Collins said, because
Lahn's testing did find geographic differences in populations harboring
the gene variants today. They were less common in sub-Saharan African
populations, for example.

That does not mean one population is smarter than another, Lahn and
other scientists stressed, noting that numerous other genes are key to
brain development.

"There's just no correlation," said Duke's Wray, calling education
and other environmental factors more important for intelligence than
DNA anyway.

Language tree rooted in Turkey

A family tree of Indo-European languages suggests they began to
spread and split about 9,000 years ago. The finding hints that
farmers in what is now Turkey drove the language boom - and not
later Siberian horsemen, as some linguists reckon.

Russell Gray and Quentin Atkinson, of the University of Auckland
in New Zealand use the rate at which words change to gauge the age
of the tree's roots - just as biologists estimate a species' age
from the rate of gene mutations. The differences between words, or
DNA sequences, are a measure of how closely languages, or species,
are related.

Gray and Atkinson analysed 87 languages from Irish to Afghan.
Rather than compare entire dictionaries, they used a list of 200
words that are found in all cultures, such as 'I', 'hunt' and 'sky'.
Words are better understood than grammar as a guide to language
history; the same sentence structure can arise independently in
different tongues.

The resulting tree matches many existing ideas about language
development. Spanish and Portuguese come out as sisters, for example
- both are cousins to German, and Hindi is a more distant relation
to all three.

All other Indo-European languages split off from Hittite, the
oldest recorded member of the group, between 8,000 and 10,000 years
ago, the pair calculates1.

Around this time, farming techniques began to spread out of
Anatolia - now Turkey - across Europe and Asia, archaeological
evidence shows. The farmers themselves may have moved, or natives
may have adopted words along with agricultural technology.

The conclusion will be controversial, as there is no consensus on
where Indo-European languages came from. Some linguists believe that
Kurgan horsemen carried them out of central Asia 6,000 years ago.
"No matter how we [changed] the analysis or assumptions, we couldn't
get a date of around 6,000 years," says Gray.

"This kind of study is exactly what linguistics needs," says
April McMahon, who studies the history of languages at the
University of Sheffield, UK. It shows how ideas about language
evolution can be tested, she says: "Linguists have always been good
at coming up with bold hypotheses, but they haven't been terribly
good at testing them."

But the technique is still fraught with difficulties, McMahon
warns. There is lots of word-swapping within language groups.
English took 'skirt' from the Vikings, for example, but 'shirt' is
original. Linguists must separate the shared from the swapped, as
any error will affect later studies.

The Kurgan might not be out of the picture entirely, says McMahon
- they may have triggered a later wave of languages. "This isn't
going to knock the debate on the head," she says.

Biology and linguistics can learn a lot from each other, comments
geneticist David Searls of GlaxoSmithKline Pharmaceuticals, based in
King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. "There may be some fundamental
principles of evolution of complex systems, such as languages and
organisms," he says.

The Road to Paradise

Published in the Express on Monday, February 8,
1999

The snow-covered dome of the Mountain of God, shrouded in billowing
clouds, towered above the old Mongol village known locally as 'the
honeycomb'. Earlier that morning I had set out on a pilgrimage to the
Exalted Throne of Yahweh where Adam's god dwelt. Within an hour the noise
and chaos of Tabriz had been left far behind, as our four-wheel drive
ascended out of the alpine valley of the Adji Chay onto the plateau of the
Sahand massif, with imposing volcano at its heart. Now I found myself at
the entrance to one of our world's most extraordinary places - the
troglodyte village of Kandovan.

Ambling down the cobbled street - only just wide enough to take a
donkey and cart - I turned up a steep side alley, all the time stalked by
a clutch of free-roaming chickens. The alley soon morphed into a roughly
sculpted flight of steps which twisted and turned between huge canine
teeth of lava. Each was a home - a dwelling from a bygone age with rickety
wooden door and tiny mullioned windows. In this Dysneyesque landscape of
cave-dwellers, I almost expected Pinocchio to appear around the next
bend.

Kandovan - 'The
Honeycombe'.

My long journey, starting in the research libraries of London
University, had led me to the Mesopotamian flood plain and on up into the
mountains of Kurdistan, finally to reach the place the Book of Genesis
calls the Garden of Eden.

There is no straightforward way to explain how an Egyptologist, used
to working in the dry heat of the north African deserts, should end up
traversing the Zagros mountains of western Iran in search of the earthly
paradise. I had begun my studies in the Departments of Egyptology and
Ancient History at University College, London, with a major interest in
the complex chronology of Egyptian civilisation. My PhD work to radically
revise that chronology had inevitably drawn me into the world of biblical
history - so closely bound up with the land of the pharaohs. Years of
research had led me to the conclusion that many of the stories in the Old
Testament were based on real historical events: the Israelite sojourn in
Egypt, the Exodus, the conquest of the Promised Land - all were attestable
within the archaeological record once the correct chronology had been
applied.

But why was I now delving into the Book of Genesis - that most
mythological and hoary of the biblical texts? Surely it would have been
better to leave well alone? But that is not my way. The simple fact is
that ancient stories and legends have always fascinated me and the chance
to uncover the historical reality behind the greatest legend of them all
was just too tempting an opportunity to pass by.

The 'Temptation Seal' on display in the British
Museum.

Back in 1987 I had been sent a short, privately published paper by
amateur historian, Reginald Walker (1917-1989), which proposed a location
for the Garden of Eden in north-western Iran. The main thrust of Walker's
argument was that the four rivers of Eden, described in Chapter Two of
Genesis, were to be found in that region. All four had their sources (the
Bible refers to them as 'heads') around the two great salt lakes of Van
and Urmia.

Ever since the time of the Jewish historian Josephus, a near
contemporary of Christ, scholars have tried to use Genesis 2 to locate
Eden. But the problem has always been the identification of the rivers
themselves. The Bible calls them Perath, Hiddekel, Gihon and Pishon. The
first two are no problem: the Perath is simply the Hebrew version of
Arabic Firat and Greek Euphrates; similarly the Hiddekel is Hebrew for
Sumerian Idiglat from which the Greek Tigris derives. The remaining two
rivers, however, have always been a mystery. Clearly, in order to locate
Eden precisely, we need to find the sources of all four - and that's where
Walker's research comes in.

He showed that the River Aras, flowing into the Caspian Sea from the
mountains north of Lake Urmia, was once called the Gaihun. By checking the
writings of the Islamic geographers who accompanied the Arabic invasion of
Persia in the 8th century, I was able to confirm that this was indeed the
case. Moreover, even as late as the last century, Victorian atlases and
encyclopaedias were still naming the river as the Gaihun-Aras. The Gaihun
is therefore the missing biblical Gihon.

The fourth river - the Pishon - was more difficult to find. Walker
suggested that this Hebrew (West Semitic) name derived from the old
Iranian Uizhun, where the Iranian vowel 'U' had been converted into the
Semitic labial consonant 'P'. Thus we have Uizhun to Pizhun to Pishon.
Strange as it may seem, such switches do occur between the two language
groups. For instance, one archaeological site in Iran is known by its
Arabic (West Semitic) name of Pisdeli whereas its ancient (Iranian) name
was Uishteri. The river Uizhun (the modern Qezel Uzun) - thus identified
as the biblical Pishon - flows down from the mountains of Kurdistan and
empties into the southern basin of the Caspian Sea.

The four rivers of Eden.

Bringing all this together we find that the sources of all four rivers
originate in the highland area which Alexander the Great knew as Armenia
and we know today as eastern Turkey and western Iran.

******

An extra-biblical Sumerian epic known as 'Enmerkar and the Lord of
Aratta' relates the tale of a journey made by the envoy of Enmerkar, King
of Uruk, from his home city in southern Mesopotamia, through the seven
high passes of the Zagros range and down into the magical kingdom of
Aratta - the 'Eldorado' of the ancient world. Enmerkar was the second
ruler of Uruk after the Flood, according to the Sumerian King List. A
crucial line in the epic describes the envoy descending from the last of
the seven mountain passes (the Sumerians called them 'gates') and crossing
a broad plain before arriving at the city of Aratta with its red-painted
city wall.

The envoy, journeying to Aratta, covered his
feet with the dust of the road and stirred up the pebbles of the
mountains. Five gates, six gates, seven gates he traversed. Like a
huge serpent prowling about in the plain, he was unopposed. He lifted up
his eyes as he approached Aratta. [extracts from 'Enmerkar and the Lord of
Aratta']

Here, the Sumerian word for 'plain' is edin which
some scholars believe is the source of the word Eden in
Genesis.

So, combining Walker's discovery of the four rivers together with the
Sumerian location of Eden, it seemed as though the whereabouts of the lost
Eden and its fabled garden was near to being resolved. I decided to set
out for the ancient city of Susa (burial place of Daniel of the lions'
den) in the south-western flood plain of Iran (Iraq was off bounds for
obvious reasons) from where I determined to retrace the Sumerian envoy's
route to paradise.

The location of Eden (red shading) in Western Iran and Eastern
Turkey.

Following the ancient track through the seven 'gates', I eventually
reached the Miyandoab plain to the south of Lake Urmia. The journey had
taken four days by car but would have taken the envoy the best part of
four months by donkey. The edin remains today one of the lushest regions
of the Middle East: thick soil, fruit orchards and vineyards, lazy
meandering rivers. This, I am sure, was the original heart of Eden which,
over time, became a much wider area, including both the salt lakes and the
Garden of Eden itself. The Bible describes the latter as being 'east in
Eden' - in other words to the east of but still within the wider territory
of Eden.

My driver and I continued eastwards, between the south-eastern shore
of Lake Urmia and the towering volcanic peak of Mount Sahand. An hour's
drive along the highway brought us into a long west to east valley, the
slopes of which were terraced with 'every kind of tree' smothered in
spring blossom

God planted a garden in Eden, which is in the
east, and there he put the man he had fashioned. From the soil, God caused
to grow every kind of tree, enticing to look at and good to eat. [Genesis
2:8-9]

All around a high snow-laden ring enclosed the valley, nurturing its
warm micro-climate. The nearest mountain to the north glowed bright red in
the low evening light - a pile of pure red ochre. At its foot sprawled the
regional capital of Tabriz, squatting at the centre of the valley where
Adam and Eve (whoever they were) once lived according to biblical
tradition. The first thing which came to mind was paradise lost. Nothing
of the earthly garden and its settlement could have survived beneath these
bustling streets. But then, away from the city, I soon discovered that
there was much that remains of Adam's Neolithic culture.

Paradise Lost - the sprawling city of Tabriz.

This was the region where Man first began to settle down to sedentary
life; where he learnt to domesticate animals and plant his crops; and
where he began to bury his dead in graves, the bones painted in red-ochre.
Adam's name means the 'red-earth' man. According to Sumerian mythology,
Man was crafted by the gods from the clay of the earth, just as a potter
throws his red clay pots on the wheel. The creation of Man in Genesis is
much the same.

Yahweh God shaped Man (Heb. Adam) from the dust
(Heb. aphar) of the earth (Heb. adamah) and blew the breath of life into
his nostrils, and Man became a living being. [Genesis 2:7]

return to the earth (Heb. adamah), as you
were taken from it. For dust (Heb. aphar) you are and to dust (Heb. aphar)
you shall return. [Genesis 3:19]

Here the word 'dust' is a poetical translation. The understanding of
Hebrew aphar is the earth from which clay is made, or simply clay itself,
and I believe the clay which gave Adam his name was sourced in the red
mountain looking down on Tabriz. Throughout many prehistoric cultures (and
including the later Mesoamerican civilisations such as the Maya) the
daubing of human bones in red paint or powder was a substitute for the
life-blood which had been lost with the decaying flesh.

******

The Hebrew word for 'garden' used in Garden of Eden is gan which has
the meaning 'walled' or 'enclosed garden'. The enclosed valley of the Adji
Chay is just that - a rich-soiled paradisiacal haven protected by high
mountain walls. The Greek version of the Old Testament calls the Garden of
Eden 'Paradise' (paradeisos) after the ancient Persian pairidaeza meaning
'enclosed parkland'. The great Meidans (royal squares) of Islamic Persia,
particularly the beautiful Meidan-é Imam of Isfahan, are symbolic
representations of the original Garden of Eden with their high enclosures
and formal gardens containing fountains and pools.

When the descendants of the Mongol chieftains who had invaded Persia
in the 13th century moved on into India to become the Mogul emperors of
the 16th to 19th centuries, they took the Persian ideas relating to the
Garden of Eden with them. So it was that Shah Jehan built the Taj Mahal
for his beloved queen, Muntaz Mahal, not simply as a mausoleum but as a
representation of heaven itself - with the mausoleum functioning as the
Throne of God. Jehan was effectively recreating the paradise on earth
which had been lost to humanity following the expulsion of Adam and Eve
from the Garden of Eden. A study of the Koranic inscriptions around the
arches of the Taj, undertaken by Professor Wayne E. Begley of Iowa
University, has shown that this was the hidden secret of the building -
the sacred knowledge of Eden brought out of Sufic Iran.

The Taj Mahal - an architects reconstruction of
Eden.

However, now that the landscape of Eden and its garden have finally
been identified, I believe we are in a position to read much more into
this extraordinary 17th-century monument to one man's vanity.

I shall scale the heavens. Higher than the
stars of God I shall set my throne. I shall sit on the Mountain of the
Assembly far away to the north. I shall climb high above the clouds; I
shall rival the Most High. [Isaiah 14:13-14]

The Taj Mahal's glistening white dome, can be seen as a representation
of the snow-capped Mount Sahand - the original exalted throne of God. The
formal gardens in front of the Taj mirror the garden of paradise with the
central pool (representing Lake Urmia) and the four water channels
(representing the four rivers of Eden) flowing out from the centre of the
complex. The ornamental arch leading into the enclosed garden of the Taj
Mahal represents the mountain pass or 'gate' leading into Eden which was
ferociously guarded by the cherubim and the Fiery Flashing Sword. The
symbolism is striking.

******

But, back in the real Garden of Eden, we still have much more to
discover. Even further to the east of the Adji Chay valley and Tabriz,
beyond a high pass leading out of the Garden of Eden, is the land of Nod
into which Cain was exiled after he had murdered his brother Abel. The
area is still today called Upper and Lower Noqdi and many villages bear
the epithet Noqdi ('belonging to Nod').

In the same region we find the town of Kheruabad. The name means
'settlement of the Kheru-people' and the Kheru were the Kerubim (Cherubs)
of Genesis who protected the eastern entrance into Eden. The volcanic peak
which guards the eastern gateway back into the Garden of Eden is a good
candidate for the 'Fiery Flashing Sword' associated with the Kerubim. When
I travelled over the pass beneath Savalan volcano for the first time, the
vehicle was pounded by a violent electrical storm. To the ancients, used
to the metaphor of jagged peaks as divine swords or spears, it would have
been easy to envisage the angry mountain, casting down its bolts of
lightening, as the Fiery Flashing Sword of Genesis.

The Garden of Eden in Western Iran.

I returned to Eden from Nod by a different route, travelling along the
valley of the Ahar Chay - the next river basin north of the Adji Chay. The
Ahar Chay is a major tributary of the Gaihun-Aras/Gihon which, according
to Genesis 2 'winds all through the land of Cush'. My map confirmed once
more that we really were in the primordial landscape of Adam and Eve.
Separating the Ahar and Adji valleys, and acting as the northern wall of
the Garden of Eden, stretched a high snow-capped ridge named Kusheh Dagh -
the 'Mountain of Cush'.

Long after nightfall I was back in my Tabriz Intercontinental Hotel
bed, dreaming of an early morning climb up to the Mountain of God.

******

The troglodyte village of Kandovan seems as old as the mountain to
which it clings. We can certainly record its history back to the Mongol
invasion of Persia in the 13th century when a group of settlers occupied
the village. But none of today's locals have memories beyond the arrival
of their Asiatic ancestors. Did the village exist before that time? It
seems highly likely, given the complex agricultural terracing which covers
the steep-sided valleys around the holy mountain. Assyrian war annals of
the 8th century BC mention towns in the vicinity of Mount Uash (the
Assyrian name for Sahand volcano) and these population centres would have
required considerable agricultural produce which must have been eked out
of the volcanic soil clinging to the slopes of Sahand. Beyond the 8th
century BC we cannot go with any certainty, but Neolithic occupation
around Lake Urmia and Mount Sahand has been confirmed by limited
archaeological investigations. Of the thousands of ancient occupation
mounds surveyed in this region only a tiny percentage have been excavated.
We have just begun to scratch the surface in the land where human
civilisation began.

Whatever the ancient history of Kandovan, the soul of the place is
timeless. Hardly anything has changed over the centuries - until very
recently, that is, when electricity was piped up from Tabriz. The only
other concession to the modern world is a fag shop and a picnic area for
Tabrizi weekend tourists. They come up the mountain armed with plastic
containers to collect the water which flows down from the nearby summit of
the mountain. This water is regarded as having magical properties: it
cures the sick and prolongs life. Many a grandma or grandpa in Tabriz are
fed the holy water of Mount Sahand to keep them fit and strong. The reason
for this veneration is all to do with the sacred source of the river which
runs through the Garden of Eden.

At the summit of one of the two peaks of Sahand the extinct volcanic
chimney overflows with ice-cool water as if from a bottomless well. The
locals call it Jam Daghi - 'Mountain of the Chalice'. The water which
gurgles from the tiny lake joins other streams, flows past Kandovan and on
down into the Adji Chay valley, eventually forming a marshy delta on the
eastern shore of Lake Urmia.

A river flowed from Eden to water the garden,
and from there it divided to make four streams (Hebrew roshim meaning
'heads'). [Genesis 2:10]

In Sumerian theology spring-water lakes on top of mountains were
regarded as holy places where humans might communicate with the great god
of the underworld ocean of sweet water upon which the earth floated. Such
an interface between the worlds of the living and dead was called an abzu,
from which we get our word abyss. The god of the abzu was known to the
Sumerians as Enki ('Lord of the Earth') - the creator of humankind and the
'friend of Man'. The Akkadians and Babylonians knew him as Ea (pronounced
Éya) and it was this Ea who warned the Mesopotamian hero of the flood of
the impending destruction of mankind by the storm-god, Elil (Sumerian
Enlil). Could Ea, god of the Sahand abyss, have been the deity worshipped
by Adam and Noah? You will have to wait for another day for the story of
the flood when I will reveal the hidden name borne by the god of the
Israelite ancestors.

Meanwhile, the troglodyte village of Kandovan with its volcanic spires
was as close as I could get to Adam's world. I had travelled over one
thousand kilometres from the Mesopotamian plain to the Garden of God. I
had crossed seven mountain ridges, through the ancient lands of Kuzestan,
Luristan and Kurdistan. I had followed in the footsteps of Enmerkar's
weary envoy as he crossed over into the mysterious land of Aratta and,
beyond, I had found myself in the primeval world of Adam and Eve. I was
literally in Seventh Heaven. My journey had come to an end just below the
summit of God's holy mountain. The Exalted Throne of God was within reach,
a thousand metres above me, but sadly not this time. Dark clouds had
enveloped the mountain and falling snow began to shroud the way forward.
My meeting with God would have to wait for another time. I headed down the
mountain, leaving Pinocchio and his friends to their own devices.

Son of Man, raise a lament You were in Eden,
in the Garden of God I made you a living creature with outstretched
wings, as guardian, you were upon the holy Mountain of God, you walked in
the midst of red-hot coals. I have cast you down from the Mountain of
God and destroyed you, guardian winged creature, amid the coals. [Ezekiel
28:11-19]

copied from http://www.nunki.net/PerDud/TheWorks/Express/Paradise.html